The earlier articles contain information that will not be repeated here, as well as concepts that will be referenced but not re-explained. In general, it is safe to assume that any praise or criticism found in the 10.3 article that is not either reinforced or contradicted in this article continues to be true of 10.4.

My impressions of Tiger are based on my experience using it with the following hardware:

Long-time readers will note that my faithful blue and white G3/400, which has participated in all earlier reviews of the major releases of Mac OS X, has finally been retired. My "low-end" test system now sports a 1GHz G4 with 512MB of RAM, and the high-end system now has another hard drive and an extra 1GB of RAM. I think the upgrades are fitting, given the 18-month gap between Panther and Tiger. I only regret that I no longer have the absolute fastest Apple system to test with, since it adds that extra little bit of legitimacy to my performance gripes.

Branding

The promotion of the "big cat" names, Jaguar, Panther, and now Tiger, as official parts of the product naming scheme for Mac OS X releases leads me to wonder if Apple will eventually create a new set of actual, internal code names for its future OSes. If it happened for Tiger, I don't know about it. (On the other hand, there was "Smeagol" for the special G5-only build of 10.2.7.)

The semi-literal fur interpretation passed up by Panther's marketing team is also spurned by Tiger. Although a "tiger stripes wreathed in darkness" theme was used on pre-release DVDs and the associated banners at WWDC, the only tiger stripes you'll find in the official release are in a bundled desktop picture.

Instead, Tiger goes with a modified version of the "metal X" theme introduced with Panther. This time, the serifs are gone. In earlier variants, the ends of the "X" often extended past the edges of the display area. You can seen an example on the left below. The version on the right is the final version.

The other theme is the use of "spotlights," an obvious reference to the new search technology of the same name. There's even a new spotlight-themed introduction movie featuring our old friend the word "welcome" in its usual assortment of languages.

Finally, let's see how the update box art line-up looks.

Mac OS X boxes: Cheetah/Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger

Well, the Tiger "X" does make the Panther "X" look kind of puny. But the spotlight effect lessens the "Box o' Death" thing Panther had going on. On the other hand, the Tiger section of Apple's web site is much less shy about using jet black all over the place. The Tiger box is not bad, but I'm kind of disappointed that there's no radical new design this time around. Maybe similar designs come in pairs?

Installation

Tiger comes on DVD-ROM media only. This is a first for Mac OS X. For customers without DVD-capable optical drives, Apple offers a $9.95 "Media Exchange Program." To take advantage of the program, customers must purchase Tiger, fill out a form, then mail it back to Apple along with their original Tiger DVD and a $9.95 payment (plus any applicable sales tax). That's pretty annoying, but I can understand Apple's decision to move to DVDs. Like the transition from ADB to USB that many Mac users considered abrupt and premature, I'm sure this will all be long forgotten by the time Mac OS X 10.5 arrives.

There's not much new to note about the installation and setup process. Like the later versions of Panther, the Tiger setup process includes a data migration tool that offers to import user accounts, network settings, and applications from another Mac connected via a FireWire cable.

I tried to use this feature once while setting up a new Panther machine, but the granularity of the choices made it useless to me. I wanted to migrate my account (preferences, settings, etc.) but didn't want to migrate any of my documents. The only choice that was close to what I wanted was the full home directory migration. At over 100GB, my home directory alone wouldn't have fit on the target machine.

Maybe my example isn't typical, but I'd still like to see an option to migrate, say, just my account and my "Library" directory. Unfortunately, Tiger doesn't include any new options in this area.

John Siracusa
John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer. Emailsiracusa@arstechnica.com//Twitter@siracusa